Rebellion Entertainment has launched Evil Genius Online in open beta on Facebook. The game sees players building their own evil lair with intentions of taking over the world, completing quests comprised of evil deeds, commanding their army of minions and more.

Actions require minions to complete, with the amount of available minions limiting the number of individual tasks players can complete at the same time. Players can build barracks and lockers to recruit new minions over time, but premium items can be used to recruit new minions instantly.

Players can dig outward to expand their lair with larger control rooms, chemical and technical labs, mess halls, strong rooms and even basic hallways, and players can build individual pieces of furniture (like the aforementioned lockers) in these rooms to unlock new portions of gameplay. A Data Stealer in the control room, for instance, can be used to collect pieces of Data, a collectible used to upgrade items or complete quests.

When players are away, debris will appear throughout the lair, but minions can clean this for a chance at free gold, experience points and collectible items.

Players can spend Gems, the game’s premium currency, in a variety of ways, from speeding up the building or upgrading time of a piece of equipment or furniture to purchasing collectibles which can otherwise be earned for free by asking friends.

Image via Rebellion Entertainment

Evil Genius Online has been in closed beta for eight weeks, with Rebellion finding existing franchise fans to be positively surprised with the game’s transition from a traditional PC experience to one on Facebook.

“When we launched the closed beta, we made it a priority to reach out to fans of the 2004 Evil Genius PC game rather than a wider audience. I think it’s fair to say the Evil Genius community voiced some initial concerns about our direction, but it’s these same gamers that not only got behind the game, but played a big part in making it better,” said Jason Kingsley, Rebellion CEO and Creative Director, in a statement.

Lead Producer Steven Archer adds: “With such constructive feedback, the natural next step was to open the beta up to a lot more players. We’ve no idea how a new audience will react – many of them probably haven’t played the original Evil Genius PC game. We can’t wait to see what happens.”

Evil Genius Online is now available to play for free in open beta on Facebook, with a full launch expected early next year. Check back soon to follow the app’s growth on AppData, our tracking service for mobile and social apps and developers.

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